Reaching The Champagne Fairs
To cross the Alps, the caravans of pack mules made their way over the Mont Cenis Pass, a journey that took more than a month from Genoa to the fair cities, along one of the varied options of the Via Francigena. Professional freight-handlers might make the trek, under contract to merchants. P. Huvelin documented the existence, by the second half of the thirteenth century, of a faster courier service facilitated the transfer of letters and market information between north and south, one organised for the particular advantage of the Arte di Calimala, the cloth-merchants' guild of Florence, others organised by cities of Siena and Genoa and by the mercantile houses. In early February, 1290, it took a courier no more than twenty days to make the journey from Lagny to Florence, R. D. Face noted. Alternatively, north Italian goods were shipped to Aigues-Mortes then up or along the Rhone, Saône and Seine.
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